Airbus A380

The A380 is a European-made wide-bodied jet airliner made by Airbus. Introduced in October 2007, it is the biggest passenger aircraft in the world, carrying a maximum of 853 passengers. It has over 40% more space than the world's second largest airliner, the Boeing 747-8, with a complete upper deck instead of a partial one. Despite it's enormous size, the A380 only consumes 3.3L of aviation fuel to fly one passenger over 100km.

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Trivia

Airbus A380 is marked as largest passenger airplane in the world. As of October 2015, Airbus had received 317 firm orders and delivered 173 aircraft; Emirates is the biggest A380 customer with 140 on order and 67 delivered.

Review

The lack of engine noise—it's 50% quieter than a 747-400 on takeoff—was downright eerie. The A380 is so big it's difficult to sense its speed, and its upper deck is so far away from the engines the noise dissipates. — Times magazine

In real life, With more air travel moving to thinly traveled point-to-point routes rather than through major hubs, it was unlikely one could ever sell enough planes to recover the development cost. The sum total lower cost of operation will never pay back the cost of developing and producing these planes, nor earn enough extra to pay the shareholders for putting up the money, as it bleeds taxpayers in the countries that subsidize it. This isn't a shocker either, as Boeing elected in advance not to compete with a new airplane in this class because they didn't think there was room for even one such model in the market, let alone two. It is considered by some as a complete disaster: the success of the A380 superjumbo is still under question. The double-decker plane has drained resources and is not yet profitable. The vast majority of the A380s have been ordered by one airline, Emirates, whose business model as a long-haul “superconnector” it suits.

A380 requires airports to make adjustments in order to handle a jet of this size, making some potentially good routes impossible.

The A380 will only be economical on routes between two hubs, which in turn will only support A380 levels of service if the hubs continue growing in most cases.

It would seem no major feat of engineering to construct a full length upper deck - especially when you see how a 744 can be modified in to a Dreamlifter.

It would also seem that the stretching of the upper deck would not increase overall drag too much, although I appreciate the extra weight would affect things like range etc.

The 747 has the obvious advantage over the A380 as a freighter because it was designed from the outset with the flight deck in an elevated position to enable the loading of freight. This advantage could be maintained with a full length upper deck.

In a freighter configuration the main deck would be identical to the 747-8F but whilst the main deck is used for container freight, surely a full length upper deck would prove useful for smaller parcels.